26 Living on Next to 



taking the average fisherman or farmer as a 

 type? I very much doubt whether they are 

 any happier because they spend ten times as 

 much money. Certainly they are not half so 

 healthy, and they die earlier. It did not need 

 Matthew Arnold to convince many of us that 

 American life is often sadly uninteresting, 

 commonplace, even inane. We all know how 

 sadly vapid is the talk of ninety-nine people 

 out of a hundred we meet. Most of us can 

 count upon our fingers the men and women we 

 know whose talk is worth listening to. I am 

 not sure that the effect of city life as seen in 

 our large cities is anything to be proud of. In 

 the old days, before railroads and post-offices 

 and cheap newspapers and books, country life 

 meant intellectual isolation. To-day it means 

 nothing of the kind; no matter how far you 

 are from the centres of civilization the mails 

 bring you all the thought of the great world 

 worth recording. The conditions have changed. 

 People talk of the inspiration of the crowd, 

 the electrical influence of great numbers, the 

 brilliant minds reflecting light upon the dull 

 ones. I confess that I can see but little of this 



